You need a carrier Wi-Fi strategy to rightload your network assets

Wi-Fi is everywhere! According to the iPass Wi-Fi growth map, the number of commercial Wi-Fi hotspots is expected to grow by 33% over the next three years, reaching a stunning 12.3 million hotspots worldwide in 2018. At this point 85% of your subscribers mobile data traffic (if we include Wi-Fi only devices) is expected to go through Wi-Fi. That number is already 70% today. This will have an impact on churn. Wi-Fi may be the best insurance policy you can get for protecting your 3G/LTE business in a Wi-Fi centric world.

Many of your subscribers already have three Wi-Fi enabled devices: their smartphone, tablet and laptop. This number will soon increase with other types of devices such as game consoles, cameras and portable printers. The Wi-Fi (r)evolution within your subscriber base is inevitable.
It is up to you as a mobile operator to decide what to do with this opportunity.

Wi-Fi Calling – Benefit from Wi-Fi without even deploying it

Wi-Fi Calling, smartphone voice traffic over Wi-Fi, works transparently with any Wi-Fi connection through a tunnel between the smartphone and a gateway in the mobile core. This will improve your indoor coverage for voice because people are connected to a Wi-Fi network most of their time, especially at home.

However, as mentioned above, there are many good reasons for deploying your own Wi-Fi footprint for data. Let us give you another one. With your own Wi-Fi network you will get a better chance to control QoS for an exceptional voice quality in Wi-Fi Calling.

Mobile Operator Wi-Fi adoption – Where are you?

After hundreds of discussions with mobile operators from every corner of the globe, we’ve come to understand that every mobile operator has a unique perspective, and each one is at a different stage in their Wi-Fi adoption process.

Wherever you are, Aptilo is happy to be a your partner. If you have an immediate need for offloading your 3G/4G network to Wi-Fi, or realize that you need a Wi-Fi strategy to stay ahead of the data explosion curve, then learn more about our carrier-class Wi-Fi solution. This solution has been deployed with 100+ service providers in more than 65 countries and is the core component of our mobile data offloading solution.

If you have decided to rely on 3G/LTE for now, to solve the capacity needs in your network, then please consider our 3GPP Policy & Charging solution (PCRF+) in order to control the user experience in the 3GPP network.

Mobile operators need to have a Wi-Fi strategy

If you’re concluding that Wi-Fi doesn’t fit within your strategic plan. That LTE will give you sufficient capacity. Then allow us to challenge you with a question:

Will the transition from 3G to 4G be very different from the move from 2 Mbps to 24 Mbps connections in fixed broadband?

What we learned from that move was that no matter how much more bandwidth users get, they consume it.

According to Signals Research Group, mobile data traffic in the United States alone is expected to grow between 53x and 153x from 2010 to 2020 while cellular network capacity will grow by only approximately 25x. Carrier Wi-Fi represents a very attractive way to fill that gap.

Wi-Fi offload – the missing piece

Online lifestyles with data-hungry applications such as Facebook and YouTube. The explosion of different types of devices. It is no wonder that there is a supply-and-demand issue for 3G/4G data capacity in the mobile networks.

Traditionally, mobile operators have managed capacity issues by:

Acquiring more spectrum. This may not be a viable option in many markets today.

Aggressive build-out of new base stations, potentially with small cells in dense areas.

Wi-Fi offload is the missing piece for mobile operators trying to put the capacity puzzle together. It is also a tremendous opportunity as carrier-class Wi-Fi addresses more than just the capacity issue – it can provide additional revenue. Wi-Fi has simply become an additional radio access for mobile operators. The standardization for 3GPP Wi-Fi access is a critical link in creating a heterogeneous network (HetNet).

Aptilo SMP 3GPP AAA+™ utilises the very best functions from Aptilo SMP for Wi-Fi offload including SIM Authentication, Policy Lookup, Wi-Fi Policy & Charging and Wi-Fi portals. It also includes unique support for 3GPP Wi-Fi access for Wi-Fi only devices and smartphones lacking EAP-SIM/AKA support.

Drivers for carrier Wi-Fi

Market differentiation

Many mobile operators approaching us come from a capacity issue perspective. However, when we ask the 30+ mobile operators that have deployed our carrier-class Wi-Fi solution, they primarily mention other soft values that provide market differentiation. This is probably because you need to have Wi-Fi in operation to discover soft-values such as:

Customer retention, by giving users what they are asking for.

Making subscribers more “sticky” by offering connections for all their devices, including devices that only have Wi-Fi.

Additional revenue

For mobile operators that decide to build their own footprint, Wi-Fi can provide additional revenue streams from ad-hoc users who sign up for services online at web-portals. Another opportunity is to offer guest Internet services for different industry segments such as enterprises, hospitality, healthcare, city/municipal and airports.

Offering Wi-Fi services for ad-hoc users is also a good way of attracting new subscribers to the cellular network by offering compelling service packages online.

Additional Spectrum and Coverage

Wi-Fi provides additional spectrum. Wi-Fi will also offer a more effective way to provide wireless data coverage in dense areas, especially indoors. While 3G/4G small cells will also provide better coverage, they will not give you additional spectrum. Furthermore, many apps for smartphones and tablets can only be used on Wi-Fi.

Reduce Cost

Whether you call it Wi-Fi offload, mobile data offloading, 3G data offloading or just data offload, it all boils down to handling the capacity crunch and reducing cost. The cost per-megabit is much lower in the Wi-Fi network compared to the cellular network. While determining how much lower depends on the operator’s individual conditions. One Aptilo customer (a mobile operator) has found it is as low as one-tenth of the cost for the cellular network when doing local breakout to the Internet (not backhauling the traffic to the mobile core).

Reduced churn is a cost reduction that might be harder to measure because it can depend on many different parameters. But, just consider what it would mean for you if churn were reduced by one percentage point just because your subscribers love your Wi-Fi service.